Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was asked about the same issue in an interview with Fox News on Thursday. He said it was not yet possible to link the co-pilot to Iran or anyone else.
A day after a flight from Dubai to Tel Aviv was thrown into chaos, US President Donald Trump has hinted that Iran may have a link to the flydubai incident, saying the answer is “yes” based on what he is hearing, though checks are still under way.
Trump was asked by a reporter whether anyone had briefed him on a possible link between the flydubai attacker and Iran. He said his team was looking into it.
“We’re working on that right now. We’ll be very open with it. Uh, I would say the answer based on what I’m hearing is yes, but we’re working on it right now,” Trump said.
On whether the US would retaliate against Iran if it was responsible for the attack, Trump replied: “Oh, they’ll be hit very hard, don’t worry.”
There has been no official evidence of Iranian involvement yet.
The reporter then asked if the man might have been placed on the plane by the IRGC, or radicalised in some other way before deciding to bring the aircraft down. “Could have been, yeah,” Trump replied.
Earlier, Trump hailed the Indian Captain Smit Machchhar, who was stabbed by the co-pilot, as a “hero” for fighting off a knife attack and opening the cockpit door and calling for help to foil a bid to crash the aircraft.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was asked about the same issue in an interview with Fox News on Thursday. He said it was not yet possible to link the co-pilot to Iran or anyone else.
“I think it’s too early to say whether he had any connections with Iran or with anyone else,” he said. He told “Fox & Friends” that he would be able to say within a matter of days whether there were any such links.
Netanyahu did say the co-pilot had gone through Islamist radicalisation. “We know that he underwent Islamist radical indoctrination,” he said. He added that this appeared to come from the man’s personal information. “That appears to be something we’re gathering from his personal information,” he said.
Wednesday’s flydubai flight FZ1073 from Dubai to Tel Aviv ended in a near-disaster. Passengers and the captain managed to overpower the co-pilot and stop him from crashing the plane. Two reserve pilots on board then landed it in Saudi Arabia.